French view of the Big Fellow

IRISH history and politics, whatever meaning they may hold for the peoples of this island and the neighbouring one, are obscure when viewed from further afield. Even our American cousins, who are supposed to take such a lively interest in Irish problems, often find us an enigma. The less than total success of the film Michael Collins in the United States is proof of this.

American audiences, used to associating Ireland with de Valera and republicanism, simply failed to understand the point of the film, or why comrades in arms, who had fought so valiantly for freedom, should turn murderously on each other. After all, few Americans had ever heard of Collins.

As for the French, our erstwhile allies and refuge in dark days, they seem to become aware of our separate existence when they see us thumbing our noses at the neighbour referred to above. At other times, one suspects that they classify us vaguely as a kind of half breed Scots - one of those minor peoples coming under the generic heading of "Anglais". Samuel Beckett, defending himself against that suggestion, struck the exact note when he replied, famously: An contraire!"

But Pierre Joannon is one Frenchman who can hardly be accused of displaying any such ignorance of Ireland and the Irish. An unreconstructed Hibernophile for many years, he has written and edited over a dozen books on this country, including the only biography of Michael Collins in the French language, originally published nearly 20 years ago. This edition has been brought out to coincide with Neil Jordan's film, which had its French premiere in Paris in mid March.

Joannon's racy, colourful style eminently suits the subject, leaving us with a vivid picture of what the Ireland of Michael Collins must have been like: the murderous struggle in the shadows; the terror of the Tan war; the cruel dilemma faced by Collins when, having fought the Crown forces to a standstill, he had to decide whether or not to make war on some of his most beloved comrades.

The author plainly sympathises with his hero throughout this struggle, and it is to his credit that he does so without feeling the necessity to denigrate de Valera. We Irish are ever ready to apportion blame, and perhaps it takes the dispassionate outside observer to show us that there are sometimes problems that transcend the capacities of any individual, even of statesmen - even of heroes.

This book is not so much a biography of Collins, in the academic sense, as a dramatised account of the events of his short life and tragic death. It is none the worse for this blow by blow approach. Joannon, whose Histoire de Irlande (Paris, 1973) was honoured by the Academic Francaise, is a careful and accurate historian. This work is remarkably free of errors, and it is refreshing to find, even if one has to go to a French writer to find it, the first accurate spelling I have seen of Beal na mBlath. Extensively researched and written in a clear and idiomatic style, Michael Collins is aimed at the general reader which is what most French readers would be, on such a subject. It is what Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien would call "Un ouvrage de haute vulgarisation", which, in French, is a compliment. If you read French comfortably, you will enjoy it immensely. If not, there is hardly a more agreeable way of improving your grasp of that most civilised of languages.

There is a bonus in the form of a thoughtful preface by Michel Deon of the Academic Francaise, another convinced Hibernophile who lives for much of the year in Co Galway. Denton makes the point that it was Collins, not Mao Tsetung, who developed the first practical application of revolutionary warfare, and he sums up the deeds and destiny of Collins in a quotation from Ernest Renan: "It is always the opposition which makes for the glory of a country. In a sense, the greatest men of any nation are those whom it puts to death."